Top (and Weirdest) Theater Stories of 2014.

Co-star Sierra Boggess previews what Norm Lewis will look like as the Phantom

Annie Baker, playwright of The Flick

Hellmman vs. McCarthy at Abingdon Square

Sting at first curtain call

The witch (Meryl Streep) and her daughter Rapunzel (MacKenzie Mauzy)

Millions March

The year 2014 in theater was one of protest, and of cult obsessions – theater people trying to engage in the wider world, and retreating from it. It was the year of critic bashing, and the year a six-year-old became the most beloved theater critic in America.

Below are some of the top New York theater news stories of 2014, and some of the weirdest stories of 2014. Sometimes it’s hard to distinguish between the two. There are also some of the people that the theater community lost this year. The stories (often with links for details) are offered chronologically by month, and paired with articles that I wrote each month.

When George Jean Nathan Award-winning theater critic Randy Gener is attacked on a street in the theater district, and hospitalized, the theater community raises tens of thousands of dollars for his medical care.

February

After, Maine returns in triumph to New York City, where it flopped just eight years earlier. It has become one of the most-produced plays in the world – some 2,000 productions, in places as remote as Dubai and Nebraska. In 2010, it became the most produced play in high schools in North America, replacing “A Midsummer Night’s Dream.”

Iain Armitage begins posting reviews of theater on YouTube. By the end of the year, his dozens of reviews of Broadway, Off-Broadway and Washington D.C. shows become increasingly popular – his review of Peter Pan Live gets more than 46,000 views — he will appear on The View, and interview Sting, who calls him one of the best interviewers he’s ever had, and be the subject of stories in Playbill, People, CBS, the Washington Post, and MTV. Iain is six years old.

March

With his Academy Award for the song “Let It Go” from Frozen, Bobby Lopez, the co-creator of “Avenue Q” and “Book of Mormon”, becomes the 12th member of the exclusive, competitive EGOT club (people who’ve won at least one each Emmy, Grammy, Oscar and Tony in a competitive category.)

At that same Academy Awards ceremony, John Travolta introduces Idina Menzel, who was there to sing “Let It Go,” as Adele Dazeem

May

RIP Maya Angelou, 86

Few recalled that she co-starred on Broadway in 1973 with Geraldine Page in a play about Mary Todd Lincoln entitled “Look Away.” Although the play closed on opening day, Angelou was nominated for a Tony Award for Best Featured Actress.

The Tony Administration Committee cut the categories of Best Sound Design of a Play and Best Sound Design of a Musical. A petition signed by 32,000 people led the Tonys to say they will reconsider but not for 2015.

The Kilroys, a group of playwrights and producers, release a list of 46 “production-ready” plays by women that have not been produced (or produced only once) in an effort to help end “the systemic underrepresentation of female voices in the American theater.”

July

The Broadway League blames the drop in Broadway ticket sales on…Elmos!

At least two City Council members have drafted bills requiring licensing and background checks of the performers wearing costumes in Times Square, and Mayor Bill de Blasio promised “real steps to regulate this new reality.”

To defend themselves, the costumed workers create an organization called Association of Artists United for a Smile New York City.

The hubbub leads to a pro-Elmo editorial in the New York Times. The mayor and police “should be careful, though, in a city that values eccentric expression and an entrepreneurial street life, to avoid cures that are worse than the disease. Free speech and association are bedrock rights, even for furry monsters.”

The winner of So You Think You Can Dance Season 11 will join the Broadway cast of On The Town in Spring, 2015.
What other reality contests should have a direct pipeline to Broadway shows?
The Bachelor winner for Phantom of the Opera? Top Chef winner for Sweeney Todd? America’s Next Top Model for Violet? How about the winner of RuPauls Drag Race getting a role on Kinky Boots?

September

Joan Rivers

Joan Rivers dies September 4, at age 81, after a medical procedure goes awry. The Broadway League announces it will not dim the lights of Broadway for her, because she hadn’t appeared on Broadway or written for it for 20 years.
The theater community rebels; Tweeters create the hashtag #Dim4Joan
The Broadway League reverses its decision.

The American Theatre Wing, which co-produces the Tony Awards with the Broadway League, announced it will take over the administration of the Obie Awards, in partnership with the Village Voice, where the award for Off-Broadway and Off-Off Broadway theater began 59 years ago.

Disney has made a record $6.2 billion from its worldwide stage productions of The
Lion King, surpassing Phantom of The Opera, a decade older.

November

December

The Café Edison, aka the Polish Tea Room, is shut down by the proprietor of the Hotel Edison, who plans to install a restaurant with a “name chef.” Some 10,000 sign a petition to keep it open, to no avail. The owners of the cafe promise to try to relocate.

A writer for the Wall Street Journal who gets free tickets to Broadway shows admits to having left at the intermission for most of them, causing outrage and retaliation.

Marching from Washington Square Park to New York Police Department headquarters

Millions March NYC is a show of protest against the decision not to indict the police officers who killed Eric Garner. It is the latest of a series of protests nationwide. Theater artists both participate in the general protests, and created their own responses – such as Keith Josef Adkins commission of six plays by black male playwrights, entitled Hands Up